Crossing the Jordan – United in Prayer

Dear Praying Friends and teammates from around the world!

Welcome to United in Prayer. During this new initiative we will share inspirational prayer thoughts as well as specific prayer requests for our world church. We are also working on many other features that will be coming to the website soon. We want to begin to make this a community of prayer. In other words, we want YOU to share your prayer requests as well, and as you do, we want you to encourage one another as you lift up each other’s prayer requests to the Lord. (Soon, we will launch an online prayer room where you can do this as well.)

The Bible tells us, “…Pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” James 5:16

SEE COMMENT SECTION BELOW to leave a prayer request or encourage someone else by YOUR PRAYER!

For the devotional focus for this first week post-GC Session, we want to encourage you to take some time to reflect on the powerful challenge that our church president, Elder Ted Wilson, gave us during the final Sabbath at the General Conference Session in San Antonio. (You can read the full transcript of his message by clicking here.)

Wilson’s challenge to our church: “Cross the Jordan…Don’t Retreat!”

How timely of a message.

So many of us today have gotten stuck in lukewarm wilderness Christianity. Yes, we may have left Egypt. We may have left the world behind as we’ve been raised in the church or accepted the messages of the church. And often we are quite proud about this fact, about the fact that we don’t do the same bad things that many in the world do. But the problem is, we haven’t kept advancing spiritually in our walk with God as we should. We have settled. Unfortunately, many of us are still doing circles in the desert. Yes, we may be doing good things in the desert. We may have built amazing sand castles, we may have cleaned out dirty valleys, and we may be making headway in ways never before seen in the wilderness, but still…we are living in a dry and barren land. Our spiritual lives are still stunted and dry, far too dry. We still haven’t really grasped what it means to live by faith and to experience “life more abundant” (John 10:10).

However, God doesn’t want to leave us in the wilderness. It was never His intent for us to get stuck here. It is God’s desire for us to go forward…to cross the Jordan into the Promised Land.

Inspiration tells us, “Just as long as the church is satisfied with small things, it is disqualified to receive the great things of God” (Home Missionary, November 1, 1893 par. 25). However, in another place we are told, “[God] is well pleased when they (That’s us! That’s our church) make the very highest demands upon Him, that they may glorify His name. They may expect large things if they have faith in His promises” (Desire of Ages, p. 668).

So although we’ve experienced many spiritual blessings in our lives up to this point, let’s be careful that we don’t settle! Let’s be careful that we don’t ever become content with a superficial or shallow Christian experience. Let’s keep moving forward! Let’s keep daring to ask for more. Let’s keep moving toward the promised land!

Kneeling together for God’s glory!

Practical Application:

Over this next week, we want to challenge you to look at your life up to this point and to pray and ask God how you may have been settling in your life spiritually.

Then we want to encourage you to ask Him as you pray how He wants you to move forward. In other words, what kind of lifestyle changes, attitude changes, and spiritual changes do you need to make to move forward by faith and cross the Jordan?

Also ask yourself, are there any hindrances or things that may be getting in the way or holding you back from experiencing all that God has for you?

Prayer Request:

Pray for traveling safety for delegates and church leaders as they return to their homes!

Pray for continued personal revival in all of our hearts!

Pray that this movement of prayer can continue to grow in our own lives, in our family circle, in our churches, and in communities! May we unite in prayer as we move forward in mission!

Please share your personal prayer request on our webpage by clicking here. (Be careful about personal details you share as this page is viewable by anyone, so be discreet and to the point.)

And when you see prayer request, we invite you to comment and encourage one another, so we can create a community of prayer!

Let’s pray together and personally about these things. You can leave your prayer request below in the comments section! Let’s not settle! Let’s move forward by faith until Jesus comes in the clouds of glory to take us home!